Rebuilding Rob

The other day, as I was getting ready to shut off the TV, I stumbled upon this CNN story about “sleep divorce“

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/20/health/sleep-divorce-separate-bedrooms-wellness/index.html

The focus of the article is actress Cameron Diaz and her marriage to Good Charlotte band member Benji Madden.

The gist of the piece is that Diaz believes each person in married couple should have separate bedrooms for sleeping; and a “together” room for being intimate. The thought process being that differing schedules, and sleep disorders – such as snoring or sleep apnea, and restless leg syndrome, effect of the married partner, just as much as they affect the victim. By sleeping in separate rooms, couples can at least reduce the collateral damage of the sleep disorders

People can take whatever they want to from the story. If sleeping in separate beds, let alone separate rooms works for some couples, good on them. Personally, I’ve always felt if I’m in a relationship with somebody whom I can’t share a bed with without disruptions for a full night, then there’s something fundamentally wrong with the relationship.

I have sleep apnea myself. I sleep using a CPAP machine, as I have written about elsewhere. But I think back to my relationship with Jessica. I was using my CPAP machine the whole time we were together. Jessica may have been the lightest sleeper I’ve ever known. She would not only complain about hearing the air traveling through my CPAP machine, she also said that she could hear me snoring with the CPAP machine turned on and running.

I wasn’t insensitive to the situation. Quite the opposite in fact. I felt like, if I can mix some metaphors around, I was sleeping on eggshells whenever we were together. I felt like I had to consciously fall asleep at night breathing a little bit more softly so as not to wake her. It got to a point where I would try to stay awake for at least an hour after she fell asleep in the hopes that she would be sleeping deeply enough that she didn’t hear me snoring in the middle of the night.

Maybe some people look at the situation and say that I probably should’ve gotten another sleep test done. Maybe I needed a higher setting on my COAP, or a different type of machine to sleep at night. In hindsight, this was an early red flag in our relationship. Sleeping is perhaps the absolute most vulnerable position we can place ourselves in with another human being. How can I possibly be comfortable around this person if I wasn’t comfortable sleeping around them?

I’m not insensitive to the plight of people sleeping with a partner who has a sleep disorder. In fact, a few years prior, when The Caretaker and I were briefly seeing each other, we did sleep together on a few occasions. She was actually diagnosed with needing a BiPAP machine in order to sleep at night. She refused to use it, citing it as being uncomfortable

For those who don’t know the difference between CPAP and BiPAP machines, my CPAP machine forces air into my nose and mouth. In essence, it helps me inhale while I sleep at night. BiPAP machines, as the name implies, working two directions. In a nutshell , they assist a person with both inhaling and exhaling as they sleep.

Obviously, I’ve never been awake long enough to hear myself sleep, but was The Caretaker’s snoring any indication of what I sound like at night? I feel sorry for every partner I’ve ever been with. In the case of The Caretaker, I would wake up in the middle of the night because I heard her snoring, and then I would have a great deal of difficulty actually trying to fall asleep again. In a cruel twist of irony, the snorer had finally met someone who was greater at the game than he was.

The sleep divorce is something that I think people would really need to take on a case by case basis. Like airplane food, reality TV, and online schooling, it may have its benefits; but it is not for everybody.

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The article “Rob on…Sleep divorces” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob